Hey guys, ChrisFix here!
Today I'm gonna show you how to fix an odometer that doesn't work.
So I just got the DriftStang running, I got it registered, and now I'm out for a ride.
And one thing I immediately noticed is neither the trip odometer or the regular odometer are working.
They're not spinning at all.
Since this car is new to me, I'm not completely sure if it has 120,000 miles or more.
But one thing I know for sure, is I wanna fix the odometer, so it works.
Now, this fix I'm about to show you applies to pretty much any car
with an analog dash, with these numbers that actually physically spin.
Digital dashes are a little bit different, and there are two common reasons
why your odometer stops working.
Back in the old days, they actually had a spinning cable that was connected to either the wheel or the transmission
and that spinning cable would turn the odometer so you can get your mileage.
And I'm sure you've seen it in the movies, where someone puts the car
up on jack stands and runs the car in reverse to roll back the odometer.
Well, that was actually something that could happen back in the day.
But today's vehicles work completely different.
They use something called a "vehicle speed sensor", which is this right here
and it converts a mechanical signal, so this spins
to an electrical signal, which runs up to the dashboard, and then
turns that odometer. This works for digital and analog gauges.
So if you put the car in reverse, it actually increases the mileage on the car, not decreases.
And like anything else, since this is mechanical, and this spins,
the speed sensors wear out. Usually, when they wear out, you might get a check engine light,
but, more importantly, your speedometer and odometer won't work.
So if your speedometer and odometer don't work,
you wanna replace the vehicle's speed sensor.
And the vehicle's speed sensor is located underneath the vehicle.
So if we slide from the front of the car, past the oil pan, back to the transmission,
if we look in the rear of the transmission, you could find the vehicle's speed sensor.
Right back here. And it's easy to replace, with just one bolt holding it in.
So, replacing the vehicle's speed sensor is a common fix,
when both the speedometer and odometer are not working.
But in our case, the speedometer works perfectly fine, it's just the odometer that's not working.
And the reason why the odometer stops working is because there's these gears
that actually spin the odometer, and these gears get brittle,
because they're just made of plastic, and the teeth break off, and then there's nothing to actually spin the odometer.
So, let's remove the gauge cluster, and replace these gears.
Although this job might seem intimidating, it's really simple to do.
All you need is a flat head screwdriver,
a T15 and a T20 Torx I have on a screwdriver end,
and then, of course, you want your new gears.
These gears come with a lifetime warranty, they're real inexpensive,
and they use a better quality plastic, so that hopefully you'll never have to do this again.
And since we're gonna go behind the dash and remove the dashboard,
I'm gonna change out the old incandescent dash lights
to these new LED dash lights, which will probably never burn out.
So, let's grab our tools and begin!
Anytime you're working with electrics in the car, such as removing your dashboard,
you wanna make sure you disconnect the negative terminal on the battery,
that way nothing shorts out by mistake.
After the negative terminal's removed, we can go and remove or dashboard.
Inside the car, there are two bolts that we need to unscrew
at the top of the dash.
There's one...
... and there's two.
Now, just in case you don't have a torx bit
that fits this, you can use a seven millimeter socket which also works as well.
Next, grab the headlight button, and pull it outwards.
And then turn it, so that you see the slot in the side of the plastic.
Now, stick your flat head screwdriver into that slot, and pry on that clip and pull outwards,
which will remove the switch.
Now, we're gonna remove this plastic bezel that covers the gauges.
In the left corner and in the right corner are clips, so what you wanna do,
is you wanna get your fingers behind the bezel, and with a firm pull,
pop the clips that hold that in.
And the bezel will come right out.
With the bezel removed, we have four screws we need to remove.
There's one down here. There's one up there.
And if we go to the other side. There's one down there. And one up there.
Again, use your T20 or your 7mm. There's one. And two.
Now go to the other side. There's three. And four.
With all four bolts out, gently pull the gauge cluster out far enough, so that you can disconnect
the back, where the wiring harness is.
Now that should give us room to get to the other one.
Same thing, it has a little clip that you have to press in, and then pull it right out.
Now we can remove the whole gauge cluster.
All right! With our gauges removed, we can put them on a workbench, make it easier to work on.
Now, all these gold colored screws on the outside have to be removed.
You can use a T15 torx or a 5.5mm socket.
And with the last screw removed, now we wanna gently remove this cover and place it off to the side.
If you have any dust between the gauges and this plastic piece, you can get some compressed air, and blow the dust out.
I don't know about you, but I hate when there's dust behind the clear plastic covering the gauges.
Now there's three sections of gauges that we need to pop out, so grab a screwdriver, and carefully pry upwards.
That should come right out, you can see these pins plugged right into there.
Next there's one more gold screw on this side that we have to remove.
Good. And now pry the gauges on the right side up,
and now we can remove our middle gauges. Just. Like. So.
With the middle gauge cluster completely removed, we can flip it over,
and you can see the gear, which is located right down here.
So, what happens is, the speed sensor's signal comes in here,
and it tells the motor how fast to spin. And that motor has a worm gear on it,
which is this, right here, and that worm gear spins this driven gear, the black driven gear, right there,
which spins the red gear, which gives us our mileage.
Next, we wanna remove this motor right here.
Grab your flat head screwdriver, you can see this little plastic clip right here, in the blue,
you just wanna pop that up, just a little bit, and then twist your motor,
and that will allow the motor to come out.
Now, to get the black gear out, just get your flat head screwdriver underneath it,
just like this, and pop it out.
And check out the difference.
So, the black gear is completely busted, it has teeth missing, this piece of plastic is cracked,
so we're gonna replace it with a new white gear.
Just wanna make sure that you fish all the old pieces of gear outta here, so that doesn't jam up the new gear.
And look at how soft this plastic is, it's just coming apart in my hand.
And once we're sure the old pieces are outta here,
we can grab our new white gear and that's just gonna slip right in.
Kinda clicks in there.
Good. And you can see that meshes with the red gear, so that's good.
Now we wanna remove the old worm gear, just gonna get a flat head screwdriver,
should help pry that off, and you can pull off the rest of it away.
We can get our new worm gear and that's gonna slide right on.
And with this, you wanna push the worm gear almost all the way to the base,
but you don't want to touch the base, you want it to give some space.
Little bit more, and... good!
So you can see how there's a gap in between there, this way the gear won't bind.
Now we can just push this in here, give it a little turn as it goes in, turn the motor...
All right! With our new gear in there and everything in place, let's put this back together.
So, we'll start with our speedometer and tachometer, and all these gauges, they just push right in.
They have these prongs, that fit right in here.
So, just put it in place, and push down until it clicks.
Same with the left side. And the right side. Good.
Now, with everything pushed into place, you wanna make sure that we don't forget to put in one of the screws
right there. Because once you put the plastic cover on here you can't get to this screw.
Now, you guys already saw we did this whole job with a screwdriver. But to make things go a little bit faster...
I'm gonna be using an electric screw gun.
[screw gun noise]
With that screw screwed in, now we can get our plastic cover.
And not only did I dust out the cover with air before,
but I also took a microfiber cloth and gently cleaned the surface here.
You wanna be careful, it's soft plastic, so it easily scratches. Don't use a paper towel.
Make sure you use warm water, and I made this thing look brand spanking new, check that out.
That's gonna look real nice once in the car.
And that just sits right on top.
And then, there's eight remaining screws that go around the edge at the black plastic.
And we're gonna screw those in.
Only snug these up and don't over tighten them. Because we're only screwing into plastic.
Now we're almost done! Let's flip it over and change out the bulbs.
The five black knobs are the large bulbs that provide the back lighting to the cluster.
The beige knobs are the dummy lights, like the low coolant, low oil, or ABS light,
but we're just changing the larger bulbs to LEDs.
So all you need to do is twist the knob and the bulb pops right out.
Now, with all our bulbs out, let's replace it with nice new LED bulbs.
The LED bulb is similar in size to the stock bulb, so it should fit. And all you do is pop out the old bulb,
and push in the new bulb.
Now, one thing you wanna be mindful of, when you're using LED bulbs,
is that, in many cases, polarity matters.
So when you have it plugged in, and you turn it on,
it turns on in this direction, but if you unplug it, and you just flip it around,
and plug it in, it might not light up. In this case,
it does light up, so these bulbs, the polarity doesn't matter.
But in many LED bulbs, polarity does matter,
so after you install them all, you're gonna have to plug it in, and make they all light up.
If they don't light up, take it out, flip it around, and put it back in.
With our old bulbs removed, and our new LED bulbs put in,
let's install them into our dashboard.
And the new bulb gets pushed right in, make sure you have the clearance. Good.
Turn it, so it clicks right into place.
And do the same exact thing for the other four bulbs.
All right, we're ready to install this and see if the odometer works
and see how the LEDs look. So, let's go install it into the car.
Installation is the opposite of removal.
Connect the two electrical pigtails to the gauges,
slide the gauges into the dash,
and screw in each of the four screws, so they're snug.
A drill really makes this job go a lot faster.
The black plastic bezel just slides into place,
and then you have to push it so that it clicks in.
And now we have two more screws holding in the bezel.
Good. And one less thing, our headlight knob.
You just push that in until it clicks.
Just like that.
All right, now that looks great!
We got our new LEDs in there, and more importantly, we got our new gears,
which replace this old broken one, so let's see if the odometer works.
Now, we just need to plug in the battery, and let's go out for a ride!
[key turning]
[dashboard beeps]
[engine start up]
[running engine noise]
Out for a little cruise around town, and it looks like we fixed the odometer!
Check out this time lapse. Both the odometer and trip odometer are working,
and little by little, the DriftStang is getting fixed up.
All right, now that worked perfectly!
And hopefully if you have an odometer problem, now you know how to fix it.
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Stay tuned for more drift car videos.
Things are just heating up!
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I'll post up some pictures of the LED gauge lights
the night this video gets published, I'll also link it in the description.